I was trying to come up with an image for this week's article, but based on the response last week's article garnered, I had to make one:

Lesson learned: people are really, REALLY sensitive if you say mean things about a food they like. Lesson not learned: to stop saying mean things about foods other people like. Let's freaking do this.

Okra — There is no possible way the universe intended Okra to be food. Okra is a cruel joke. Not even New Orleans can make Okra taste good, and New Orleans cuisine could, given enough spices and possibly a dead alligator, make three sticks, a rock, and a pint of swamp mud delicious. When New Orleans can't make a thing taste good, we need to stop pretending that thing is a food. In the words of our own SorciaMacnasty, "Okra tastes like dick, and not even good dick. Like, hobo dick."

Cauliflower — Cauliflower is essentially Broccoli's albino twin, and like all white people and Ernst Blofeld's cat, it is secretly evil (it's a little-known fact that every gathering of five or more white people turns into the League of Evil from the Superfriends). It's not even that Cauliflower tastes BAD, per se...it just doesn't taste like anything. It's non-food. Cauliflower makes me think Bunnicula is real, because it's exactly like what I would expect a vegetable he's done with to both taste and look like.

American Cheese — I hesitate to even include this, because colored plastic squares clearly originally intended as a Halloween decoration shouldn't count as a food (and also because we're going to get a few dipshit non-Americans going "HOW CAN ZE FROMAGE BE NAMED AFTER ZE PLACE?! IZ NO SENSE! HAW HAW HAW HAW PAMPLEMOUSSE!"), but this was one of the most popular things people kept mentioning last week (yes, I do listen to suggestions, so feel free to make them), so I figured I'd give it a shout-out.

Whatever the Fuck Subway Does to Toast Their Sandwiches — Toasted sandwiches are great, and are the reason I've spent so much money at Potbelly and Quiznos over the years. But what the fuck happens when Subway tries to toast their goddamn sandwiches? Are there evil elves sitting inside the machine just waiting to ruin anything they put inside it? Every time I've let them toast the damn things (or been unattentive as they just went ahead and PUT THE FUCKER IN THERE WITHOUT ASKING) it's tasted like crumbled spackle. I am genuinely asking: how does this fucking happen? Because you seem to have re-written the laws of oven physics, Subway.

Kugel — As a Jew, I'm convinced Kugel was invented by self-hating Jews who wanted to punish all other Jews for existing. How the fuck else do you explain what essentially amounts to a pasta-raisin-casserolepocalypse? There's no way this was intended for enjoyment by any human being with functional taste buds. And while we're on the subject:

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies — There is no justification for the fact that knowingly serving Oatmeal Raisin Cookies to children does not currently constitute child abuse under the US legal code. Oatmeal Raisin Cookies are the fucking anti-cookie.

Root Beer — Seriously, what the fuck? What the hell IS this shit? What do they even put in it, and how can anyone actually ENJOY it?! I know what the ingredient list is (I have access to Wikipedia, thank you), but that can't possibly be right, because that list doesn't include "abject hatred." Three separate times in my life I've tried to drink it, and every time my body has straight-up said "NOPE!" and refused to swallow. I love soda so much I'm surprised Michael Bloomberg hasn't put out a hit on me, and I can't even begin to fathom why anyone would willingly drink root beer.

Marshmallows — This isn't fair to Marshmallows, I'm just still bitter about the time I hit myself in the eye with a superheated Marshmallow when I was 5 years-old. I've never forgiven S'mores. Moving on.

Chunky Tomato Sauce — Look, you're on thin fucking ice already considering that you're a dish covered in a tomato product. But since it's a sauce, that removes the texture issue, so it's mildly tolerable. But just when I think I'm safe, Admiral goddamn Akbar jumps out of the closet and shouts "IT'S A TRAP!" just as I bite down on a piece of solid fucking tomato-death. Chunky Ragu makes every pasta experience akin to minesweeping, only far more tedious (and probably less tasty).

Sweet Pickles — What the fuck?! Who the hell even conceived of sweet pickles?! Who actually enjoys this culinary experience?! It's like they threw a food and an adjective in a hat and pulled out two at random. On the bright side, it could've been worse; we were THIS close to Vinegary Chocolate or Sugary Balogna. And you KNOW plenty of people would've eaten both of those if they existed; there are people who fucking eat Tempeh.

Scrapple — Scrapple is basically what they scrape up off the floor of the slaughterhouse after all the more appetizing parts of the animal have been made into delicious meat. Eyeballs are rejected as a Scrapple ingredient because they aren't quite gross enough. Sample Scrapple gets sent back with a note from the Hormel higher-ups that reads "needs more hooves." It's incredibly difficult to create a meat product even I can't bring myself to eat, but that's what Scrapple accomplishes.

Sea Urchin — I love sushi more than I love anything else in the entire world, and I absolutely include my family and loved ones in that statement. And yet, tucked within such wonderful cuisine is the deepest, darkest, most horrifying thing I have ever tried to eat. I have — whether by mistake or deliberately — eaten a lot of disgusting things before. I tried dog food once as a kid just to see what it tasted like — not even close to as bad as Sea Urchin. I put a sliver of soap in my mouth at age 9 because I had heard about parents washing their kids' mouths out with soap and I was curious — disgusting, surely, but still preferable to Sea Urchin. My girlfriend's father once accidentally ate a stinkbug that was hiding on the underside of a potato chip — given the choice, I would rather experience this 1000 times than eat Sea Urchin once, ever again. Only Japan could look at an aquatic ball of spiky malevolence and go, "hot damn, I want me some of that!"

If you've never had it before, here's the best way I can think of to describe the experience: you know when you're really, really sick with a head cold, and congested as anything, and you accidentally snort a giant wad of disgusting mucus down the back of your throat? Sea Urchin is basically that, only infinitely worse because there's a little voice in the back of your head going "YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF WILLINGLY. YOU DESERVE THIS FATE." Also, snot might actually be an improvement on the taste. If you need any evidence that humanity will one day destroy itself through its own stupidity, look no further than the fact that people actually pay to eat Sea Urchin.